Abusive Relationship And Your Health: 5 Tips To Insure Proper Digestion For Domestic Abuse Survivors
We hear that you are “what you eat.” True. And you are also “how you eat,” and “when you eat.”
How you eat and when you eat determines how we assimilate what we eat. This, of course, is how nourishing the food we eat will be for us.
Mealtime in an abusive home
Living in an abusive relationship can influence the how you eat. You can come to the dinner table and sit down to criticism, nitpicking, outright belittlement that can go from “let me count the ways I hate you” to a major family feud.
Over time, mealtime can be met with apprehension and caution--feeling states that interfere with proper digestion. So you come to the table and awhile at the table you could be preventing proper digestion and thus undermining the potential nourishing value of your food—even healthy wholesome food.
We know from ayurvedic medicine and ancient teachings for centuries, as well as from contemporary scientific research, that the digestion of food is possible as a result of the activation of the parasympathetic nervous system--relaxation.
The gastrointestinal functioning from the moment you salivate until you’re finished eating, and then through elimination, requires proper gastrointestinal functioning. And as we know, this body system is regulated by the limbic-hypothalamic-pituitary response, wherein resides the emotional brain.
The bottom line for anyone living in an abusive relationship
Be mindful of the following 5 eating tips and employ them into your daily routine.
1) Eat in a quiet and comfortable setting.
2) Keep dinner conversation to thoughts and experiences that are neutral or uplifting.
3) Have a small cup of warm to hot water with your food and avoid cold beverages with main meals.
4) Sit at the table for a couple of minutes quietly after you eat before leaving the table.
5) Eat your main meal between 12:00 PM and 2:00 PM
While these tips are given to you as though they are eating tips for domestic violence survivors, they are actually eating tips for anyone wanting to obtain maximum nourishment from their food. Thus as you adopt these into your life and notice how you feel, you may choose to keep these healthy eating habits as your lifetime routine.
